An Indonesian man claiming magic powers drank freshly slaughtered animal and snake blood yesterday as part of a ritual he said would jinx the upcoming visit of US President George W. Bush.
Ki Gendeng Pamungkas slit the throat of a goat, a small snake and stabbed a black crow in the chest, mixed their blood with herbs before drinking the potion and smearing it on his face.
"I don't hate Americans, but I don't like Bush," said Pamungkas, adding he believed the ritual would succeed because ``the devil is with me today.''
PHOTO: EPA
Bush is scheduled to visit the world's most populous Muslim nation for several hours on Monday for talks with the Indonesian president and civic leaders at a palace in the hill town of Bogor.
Bush is unpopular in Indonesia because of the US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Muslim and nationalist groups are calling on the government to cancel the trip.
Pamungkas said he believed the ritual -- performed around 1km from the palace -- would cause Secret Service personnel guarding Bush to fall into a trance and believe the US leader was under attack, causing chaos.
Sorcery is banned under Islam, but many Indonesians still believe in the practice, which predates Islam's arrival in the archipelago.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS